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[32]
twenty-four hours, and had worked hard, besides all the walking in the snow.
When we had finished our meal we took another carriage, being solemnly warned of the difficulty of crossing the Matasmin, which, like all the other streams hereabout, has no bridge.
We reached the ford just before sundown, found it frozen, broke the ice with poles; an hour and a half's hard driving and whipping got the horses into the middle of the stream, where they refused to go any farther.
We got out of the carriage, and reached the bank on the ice. I left all my luggage, but a blanket, with the carriage in the middle of the stream.
Through deep snow we walked a mile and a half to the first house.
Though called a tavern, it was a miserable hovel; and when I went in I found two slaves stretched by the fire on one side, and two pigs on the other.
As soon as the landlord had gone to the help of the driver, I began to look for accommodations for six passengers, two of whom were women.
In the kitchen I found plenty of snow, but no fire or cooking utensils or eatables.
I asked the boys if they had any beds.
‘Yes; one.’
‘No more?’
‘No.’
‘Have you any hay or straw?’
‘No.’
‘Why, what does your master's horse live on?’
‘O, he lives on the borry.’
What ‘the borry’ was, was not clear at first, but, finding it meant ‘borrowing,’ I told the boy to get in a good parcel of ‘borry.’
In an hour the coach was dragged up, and I began to talk about supper.
It was a long time before the woman of the house would answer distinctly; but, after much urging and much searching, she gave us each a small tumbler of milk, and a short allowance of Indian cake.
At ten o'clock the table was moved away, the pigs and negroes kicked out of the room, and two things misnamed beds were thrown down on some ‘borry,’ and I went supperless to bed. The wind came in through large cracks in four doors and two windows; yet I slept well, with three white companions and two negroes.
I waked in the morning more hungry than when I went to sleep; but at ‘sun up,’ as they say here, set off without a mouthful of food.
We went two miles, half on foot, and then stuck fast in the mud; and, after wasting our little strength in vain, Gray and I again mounted one of the horses, took a wrong track, went a mile before we discovered our mistake, at twelve reached the tavern only four miles from where we slept, sent back a yoke of oxen to pull out the coach, sent a man forward seven miles for horses and help, and then ordered breakfast.
The people were very poor, and we found sickness and suffering more moving than we had seen it yesterday.

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